


Awkward Silences

by paperjamBipper



Series: Memory Lane [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Family Bonding, Fluff and Humor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25271647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperjamBipper/pseuds/paperjamBipper
Summary: Whenever Ford and Mabel are alone, neither of them know what to talk about. There’s always long pauses and awkward silences in their conversations.It’s mere days before the twins are set to go home, and Ford realizes that he and Mabel haven’t spent that much time together, and Ford wants to fix this FAST before she has to go home.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Mabel Pines
Series: Memory Lane [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830763
Comments: 1
Kudos: 47





	Awkward Silences

Mabel came bouncing down the stairs, humming a song she had heard on the radio that was now stuck in her head. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she grabbed the part of the railing sticking up and swung herself around it, landing her feet down on the ground with a loud thud. She makes her way over to the kitchen and flips the switch on. She flinches away from the bright light for a moment when it comes on. She had forgotten how bright Ford’s light bulb could be first thing in the morning.

She walks over to the cupboard and opened it, standing on her tiptoes to reach the box of cereal sitting on the top shelf. When she couldn’t reach it, she stood back and kicked the shelf, and it fell into her arms.

“Haha, I guess Pacifica isn’t the only one around here cheating at life anymore” she says to herself, and puts the box on the table. She opens the cupboard above the sink, and takes a plastic bowl out. She brings it over to the table, opens the cereal box, and pours some in her bowl. Then, taking her bowl with her, she opens the fridge. Instead of taking the milk, however, she reaches for the cream. Just as she’s about to open it and pour it into her cereal, she hears heavy footsteps approaching the kitchen. She scrambles to put it back, and closes the fridge, awkwardly leaning against its door.

“I wasn’t taking the cream for my cereal! I swear!” Mabel lies.

“What?” A rough voice says, and Mabel looks up to see Ford walking into the kitchen rubbing his eyes with one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“Oh.” Mabel says, more to herself than him. “Hi Grunkle Ford. Sorry about that. I thought you were Stan” She turns around and opens the fridge, this time reaching for the milk. She pours it into her cereal and walks over to the table and places it down. She walks back over to the open fridge and takes her pitcher of Mabel Juice out. She pours it in a cup that happened to be sitting next to the fridge.

“Good morning, Mabel” Ford finally responds as he sits down at the table across from her. He must have been waiting for her to finish what she was doing. “How are you?”

“Good, Good…” Mabel says awkwardly, taking a sip from her juice. There’s a short pause. She and Ford never really have a lot to talk about, so whenever they’re alone, there’s a lot of awkward silences.

“Oh, what’s that?” Ford says, gesturing to Mabel’s cup. She places it down on the table.

“Uh, juice. I made it myself. It’s what wakes me up in the morning”

“Fascinating.” Ford says, but then squints at the cup. “Is that…a plastic dinosaur?” He asks, laughing, and Mabel tries to look the other way.

“Uh, yeah. I guess I wanted to throw something spontaneous in there. You know…Pizazz and all that” she throws her hands up in the air. She takes her spoon and starts eating her cereal. The two of them sit in silence for a bit after that. Ford opens up a newspaper he found lying in the other room and Mabel awkwardly finishes up the rest of her cereal. She stands up, and is relieved when she sees Stan standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Hi Grunkle Stan!” She says, making her way over to him. “Is Dipper up yet?”

“I didn’t see him, but you could go check if you want”

“Okay!” She says, and once again starts humming the song she was thinking about earlier as she makes her way back over to the staircase. As soon as she’s gone, Stan walks over to Ford.

“Hey poindexter, I got a question for you” he says, and Ford turns around in his chair to look at him.

“What?”

“How come you didn’t say anything to Mabel?”

“I did. When I came into the kitchen I said hello to her”

Stan raised an eyebrow. “Did you say anything else to her?”

“Well….” Ford pauses, and notices the cup of bright pink juice Mabel had left on the table. “I asked her about her drink”

Stan scoffs. “That’s it? You said hello and asked her what she was drinking?”

Ford stood up. “Well, what was I supposed to say to her?”

“Anything!” Stan says, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Mabel’s a wonderful person to talk to. Give her any subject, literally any subject, and she could hold a conversation with you about it for an hour.”

“Well, then why was she acting so weird when I walked into the kitchen? She was saying something about cereal when I walked in, but when I asked her to repeat it she didn’t say anything.”

Stan sighs, rubbing his eyes with two of his fingers. “That’s probably because she’s scared, poindexter”

“What? Scared of me? Come on, we both know that’s a load of-”

“No, no no. Not scared of you.” Stan says, cutting him off. “Scared you won’t like her. Do you want to know what she thinks?” He asks, but doesn’t give Ford much time to reply. “She thinks you like Dipper more than you like her. She chooses her words carefully around you because she doesn’t want you to think little of her”

“What?” Ford asks angrily, but also with a hint of pain in it. “That’s not true. I love Mabel. I have no idea why she would think that way”

“Hm…Maybe she got it from the fact that you’ve never spent any alone time with her. Maybe it’s because she overheard you offering her brother an apprenticeship, or maybe the fact that you told Dipper to leave you alone one minute and then you’re playing that nerdy game with him the next. She’s just as much your niece as Dipper is your nephew, and I think you should start treating her that way before she goes home.”

Ford is heartbroken by Stan’s words. He was right. Mabel had been the first person he spoke to after coming out of the portal, and she had said nothing but kind things to him. And what did he do in response? Unknowingly ignored her for the rest of the summer? Ford felt horrible.

It must be showing in his face, because suddenly Stan sighs and sat down in the chair next to him.

“I know you like her. It’s hard not to. Go spend some time with her. You’ll find you have a lot more in common with her than you realize, and she’ll really appreciate it” Stan stands up. “Trust me” he says, and with that. He turns around and walks away.

Ford glances at the bright pink cup of juice, frowning. Taking one last sip of his coffee, he places his cup down next to Mabel’s and walks up the stairs to the attic room the twins are sharing. He knocks on the door, pressing his ear against it momentarily, and when he hears two small voices inside, he opens the door. Dipper and Mabel are sitting on the floor across from each other with a game of Battle Chutes and Ladder Ships sitting in between them. They both look up when he walks in.

“Hi Grunkle Ford!” They both say in unison.

“Hey there, kids.” He says. “Dipper, do you think you could step outside for a bit? I need to talk to your sister about something”

The two small twins exchange glances and Dipper shrugs before he stands up. Mabel watches as he walks past Ford to get into the hall, and exchanges one last confused look with her before turning around the hall. When Dipper’s out of sight, Mabel stands up and sits on her bed.

“So what is it that you wanted to talk to me about? Did you swallow a plastic dinosaur when you tried some of my Mabel Juice? That happened to me the first time I made it, so what I did to get it out of my system was-” She starts, and Ford cuts her off.

“No, I didn’t swallow any. Thanks for asking though”

“Huh? Then what are you here for?” She asks, and Ford tries to walk over to Dipper’s bed to sit down on it, careful not to step on the game the kids were in the middle of playing.

“I guess I just wanted to talk, Mabel”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like we haven’t gotten that many opportunities to talk yet, and Stan says you’re going home soon”

“Hm…” Mabel says, looking around the room to try to think of something to talk about. Before either of them can say anything, there’s a loud thud outside the door that startles both of them. Ford stands up, walking over to the door, and Mabel stays where she is, watching him. Except, when Ford tries to open the door, it doesn’t budge.

“What the-?” He says to himself, attempting to pull on the door again, but still the door refuses to move. “What’s going on?” He asks, and Stan’s voice answers on the other side.

“I still don’t hear any talking in there!” He says, and Ford pulls on the door again. “Stan, are you crazy? You’re locking us in here for not talking? I’ve only been in here for 30 seconds!”

“That’s plenty of time! Plus, Dipper here says that all you’ve done since you walked in there was ask him to leave”

“Sorry Grunkle Ford!” Dipper’s voice sounds from the other side of the room. “But I’m with Stan on this one. He told me everything”

“You’re not moving from that room until you two can hold a conversation. Unless I hear yapping in there, you’re going to be stuck in there for the rest of the day.” There’s a loud thump, probably Stan stacking something else in front of the door, and then footsteps walking away from the door. Ford sighs. Of course he can’t be mad at Stan for locking him in. If he hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t have been able to find anything to talk about with her anyways, and he would have turned around and left feeling even guiltier than before. All of a sudden, he hears the sound of two small needles clicking together, and he turns around to see Mabel knitting something purple with a super concentrated look on her face.

“Mabel, are you knitting?” He asks, and she doesn’t bother to look up from her needles.

“Yeah, I make all my clothes this way. Why?” She asks, kind of shrugging it off, but Ford refuses to accept the answer that way.

“Hold on” he says, walking over to her bed to sit next to her. “You’re telling me, every sweater I see you wear, all of those are homemade?”

“Well, yeah” she says, putting her needle down and placing it down on the other side of her carefully. “Except my nightshirt. My dad bought me that one”

“Mabel, that’s incredible!”

“It is?” She asks, reaching over to pick up her needles. “It’s just something I do every day. No big deal.”

“No big deal?” Ford shakes his head. “Mabel, most people I know can’t knit things that stay together this well.”

“Oh, psshhh” She says. “I’m sure that’s not true”

“But it is. Do you think you can maybe make one for me?”

“Sure! Here, let me get my colors out while you think of what you want on it”

Mabel jumps off her bed, reaches under it, and pulls a large brown suitcase from underneath it. She clicks it open, and just about every color Ford can think of pops out of it.

“Okay.” Mabel says, plopping the suitcase on top of her bed. “Now I know you’ve already got one in red that you wear pretty much daily. Is that because red’s your favorite color, or because you don’t have anything else to wear instead?”

“…Both” Ford says, and Mabel laughs.

“Alright, then. I think I’ve got like 10 shades of red here. Would you want more ‘cherry on top of an ice cream’ red, or ‘the blood of your enemies red?”

“Uh…” Ford says, and Mabel takes that as a response, grabbing the only shade of red Ford can’t see very well.

“Cherry on top it is. Oh, and I changed my mind. I’m gonna choose what’s on your sweater because I just thought of the best thing ever to put on it and nothing you can come up with will ever compare to this.” She pulls another pair of needles out of the suitcase, and immediately begins sewing. “Do you want to go? This may take a while, and I think this counts for something. The door must be unlocked by now.”

“Unlocked?” Ford asks, but then he remembers: Stan had locked him in here to force him to talk to Mabel, but it turns out he didn’t even need it. He shakes his head. “Oh, right. No, I’m fine here. I’m enjoying your company” he says, and Mabel smiles.

“Aw thanks! Is there anything else you want to know about me while we’re in here? I bet if we don’t say anything by the next time Stan comes by he’s gonna think we never spoke at all. I bet then he’d make it impossible to leave through any method other than by grappling hook.”

Ford laughs. “Excuse me? By grappling hook?”

“Yeah” Mabel says, pausing in her sewing to reach down on the floor to grab her grappling hook. “By grappling hook. Stan gave it to me a few days after I got here” She says, twirling it around in her hands. “I’m really good at it. I once saved Dipper and I from falling off a cliff to our deaths with this thing”

“What? How? I don’t think he or Stan told me that one”

“Well duh,” Mabel says, putting her grappling hook down and exchanging it for her sewing needles. “That’s cause it would take like, a YEAR to explain what we were even doing at that cliff in the first place”

“I can imagine” Ford says, rolling his eyes. “But that’s still really cool”

“Thank you!” Mabel says. “What else, what else” she ponders on other stories to tell him, glancing down at her red thread. “Oh!” She says, almost as if it reminded her of something. “I’m an artist like you.”

“Yes, I saw” Ford laughs. “I was using some of your drawings to give that fake speech to the government agents to get them to leave us alone”

“Ah, but those were only three drawings, and you never saw the sculpture I made, so it doesn’t count” She sticks her tongue out at him, and he laughs.

“Sculpture? What kind of sculpture?”

“A wax sculpture of Grunkle Stan”

“Figures” Ford was laughing again. He hadn’t laughed this much with anyone since he and Stan were little kids. “Did he pay you to do that or was he not even willing to do that?”

“What? Oh no, I made it for him as a gift. One of his old wax figures had melted and I offered to make him something from the extra wax. ‘Cept, I didn’t tell him what it was going to be of, and it kinda freaked him out a bit when he saw it for the first time”

“I can imagine why” Ford said, smiling.

“And then its head fell off”

Ford tried to hold back a snicker, but couldn’t help it. “The statue’s head fell off?”

“Well, technically it was chopped of by a sentient Sherlock Holmes statue that thought it was the real Stan, but yeah. I guess you could say it fell off”

“Okay, now you HAVE to tell me that one” Ford says.

“Alright, Alright” Mabel says, and goes on to tell Ford everything about that happened that day. The secret door, all the wax figures, the murder, the investigation, everything. Each time Mabel speaks for somebody else she uses a different voice, and Ford loses it laughing at her impression of Stan. Since she wasn’t around when Wax Sherlock Holmes melted, she just made a guess.

Ford wiped a tear from his eye. “Mabel that’s incredible” he says, trying not to start laughing again. Mabel picks up on this, and in her Stan voice, says “Well if you liked that, there’s PLENTY MORE where that came from! Step right up folks, to hear my astounding tales of….astoundingness” which only sets off Ford off even further. Watching Ford go this crazy over a dumb impression of Stan sets Mabel off too, and soon enough they were both leaning on each other for support. Mabel makes sure to keep her needles safe.

“That-” Mabel says once she’s able to speak again, but gets cut off by her own coughing. “That does remind me of another story though. Did Stan ever tell you the time he let us run the shack for an entire weekend?”

“No, but he did mention trying to make me run the shack myself for the rest of the week, so maybe I should hear this one too?”

“Oh yeah, Grunkle Ford. You have NO idea”

Then Mabel goes on to tell the story of the same bet she had made with Stan. About how he should be nicer to his employees. The Gremloblin. The money they made, the money they had to give away for repairs. How Stan earned and lost $30,000 all in one day. Everything. And with one detail of one story, Ford would make a comment that reminded her of another, so much so that she started going into detailed stories of stuff that would happen to her and Dipper when they were younger before they arrived in Gravity Falls that June. She never put her needles down either, so each story helped pass the time as she made the sweater stitch by stitch. Not that they would’ve minded waiting longer than she needed to, anyways.

After she’s done with the actual sweater, all she has to do now is the design. She puts whatever scraps of the bright red yarn she has left and replaces it with a white one. While she stitches on the design, they switch it up and Ford tells her some of his stories. Some from his childhood, and some from the time he spent in the portal.

Finally, Mabel finishes the sweater. She places it on her lap and throws her hands up in victory, dropping her needles on the ground. She bends over to pick it up, careful not to show Ford the front of the sweater.

“Okay Grunkle Ford, are you ready for the BEST sweater you’ll ever wear? A sweater SO amazing you’ll never want to take it off?”

Ford tries to make a serious face, but can’t help but smile. “Yes, I’m ready”

“Then close your eyes”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna put it on you. DUH, that’s what you’re supposed to do with sweaters”

Ford smiles as he rolls his eyes. “Alright, fine” He says, closing his eyes and holding his hands up in the air so he doesn’t have to worry about being unable to find the arm holes. Amazingly, it slips on perfectly. He opens his eyes, but Mabel gently presses her hands against them to get him to close them again.

“Almost!” She says, and then walks over to the closet door and swings it open so the large mirror on the back of the door of it would be facing out towards it. She then walks back over to Ford and stands him up before walking him around the game in a circle towards the closet door. Once she’s in front of it, she stops.

“Okay, now!” She says, and Ford opens his eyes. The sweater Mabel gave him is a bright red, and going across the top in white is what he’s sure is a stack of books. Sitting right below the books are words that stretch about halfway down the sweater.

“The AuFORD of the journals”

“Get it?” Mabel says. “The AuFORD. Because it sounds like Author and your name is Ford! I’m hilarious.”

Ford takes a good look at the sweater, like he’s still trying to process that Mabel made it for him, and then he starts laughing really hard. Mabel joins in, and then after a short while Ford takes his arm and wraps it around Mabel before bringing her closer to him. When he finally stops, he looks down at his watch. It’s almost 5.

“Huh. I guess we spent the entire day in here anyways” He says, and glances out the window, expecting it to be getting dark, but instead, the sun is still high in the sky. He glances down at his sweater, and then over at Mabel, who was shoving her fabric suitcase back under her bed.

“Hey, why don’t we go get something to eat, just the two of us? That way we can both get out of this dumb room and I can show off my favorite sweater in the world”

“Okay!” Mabel says, and Ford waits for her by the door. Once she places her suitcase in a place she’s satisfied with, she jumps over the board game and runs to Ford’s side. He opens the door for her, not even realizing he’s able to do that now, and once she’s out, he follows her, closing the door behind him. She runs ahead to the stairs, and stops, and when he gets to the stairs she places a hand in front of him to stop him, too.

“Race ya to the bottom of the stairs!” She yells, and stumbles to rush down the stairs, Ford following closely at her feet. They’re both laughing, and neither of them stop running until they’re both at the car.


End file.
